


Road to Christmas

by RowboatCop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Flirting, I can't make them antagonistic lol, Not Rosalind Price friendly, Phil Coulson always thinks Daisy is amazing, Phil Coulson is a sad sexy baby deer, Road to Christmas AU, Scruffy Coulson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 18:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6294826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stranded in Austin, TX four days before his Christmas Eve wedding, Phil Coulson gets a ride with Daisy Johnson and her passenger, Ace Peterson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zauberer_sirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/gifts), [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts), [BrilliantlyHorrid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrilliantlyHorrid/gifts), [Persiflage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflage/gifts).



> For the Skoulson fandom, obviously. :) 
> 
> This is gonna require a suspension of disbelief that events could have proceeded more or less as they did even without Daisy and Coulson meeting (except Coulson didn't lose his hand). Just go with it??? 
> 
> (But I'm fine if you want to assume Fitz is dead. It doesn't affect the story, but might improve your reading experience.)

“Nothing?”

Coulson presses his forehead to the ticket counter, bent forward to take some of the pressure off his lower back. He’d already had two connecting redeye flights to get from DC to Austin, and now he’s stuck in this crummy airport.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the woman tells him, her friendly smile clearly wearing down after hours of dealing with a line of grumpy travelers, “weather conditions are preventing any travel ”

He looks out the window onto the runway, to the clear blue sky and green grass and bright early morning sun. And he knows — he gets it — that it’s not the weather _here_ causing the problem, but it somehow makes things more frustrating.

“Yeah,” he sighs and turns away from the counter, only to catch the eye of a small boy, who he’d swear was Ace Peterson. Coulson’s only met him twice — once when bringing in Mr. Peterson and once when delivering the boy to his aunt’s house in Boston while SHIELD scientists worked tried to understand why Mike Peterson’s body had stabilized the serum.

As quickly as he sees Ace, though, the crowds swallow him up.

Coulson spends a moment looking after him, and then shakes his head and follows the signs towards rental cars. Granted, he’ll likely drive through some of the worst of the shitty weather on his way back to LA, but he can handle it.

He’s getting married in four days, after all, so a little hardship driving to get there probably shouldn’t be a problem.

But he’s not even supposed to be traveling right now, when a freak storm has rolled in and blanketed too much of the southwest with ice and snow. His original flight is meant to put him back in LA the morning of the wedding, Christmas Eve, but leaving Rosalind to do all the last minute work. So when the undersecretary of defense fell ill, he took the chance to get out of DC.

Heading back early is supposed to be a nice surprise, but he just...really wishes he hadn’t tried.

He’s still generally frustrated when his phone rings, and he pulls it out to see Rosalind’s picture.

“Hi,” he answers, debating whether to fill her in on his current situation or try to keep it a surprise when he shows up in LA ahead of schedule.

“Hi, Phil,” Rosalind greets him. “How was your last meeting?”

Coulson licks his lips and decides to go with it.

“It was fine,” he declares. “Nothing much to report.”

“I suppose no news is good news. Let me know if there’s any word on whether they’re going to increase our funding.”

It gives him pause because he’s not sure at what point it all became _ours_ — _our funding_ — as though the ATCU’s operations and SHIELD’s are merging as he and Rosalind do. But then, they met because he was trying to get something done for once, their whole relationship tangled up in the mixed agendas of their organizations.

And it’s not like he’s _against_ what Rosalind has been doing, especially considering that most politicians seem to think the alternative is flat out elimination of gifted people, but everything has happened so fast since he met her four months ago.

Sometimes, though, he pauses and he’s not quite sure what the right thing is anymore.

“Phil?”

“Sorry,” he shakes his head and looks around the crowded airport. “I think I need a coffee. How are arrangements coming?”

“Well,” she answers, and he can hear her smile. “Really well. I think you’ll like it. Your plane is in at nine on Thursday morning, right?”

“Right,” he agrees, smiling a little at the thought of surprising her. Maybe he’ll be able to grab a rent-a-car and still get there a day early, show up with flowers and a bottle of something good for the night before their wedding. They so rarely get time off together where they’re not talking about work, and it would be _nice_.

“I’ll see you then.”

“Yeah. Love you.”

She hangs up without saying it back, and he frowns against his phone. He wants to get married — he’s wanted to get married, to have a family, for most of his life — but sometimes he feels this striking discordant feeling, like something’s not quite right. It feels the strongest at moments like this, when he lays himself out there and she...doesn’t.

She’s guarded, more guarded than he is, even, and he gets it. They’re both spies — their similar backgrounds are part of why this might actually work — and they’ve never had an easy go of it in opening up to each other.

It’s easy to feel, sometimes, like they don’t actually know each other, which is probably fair enough especially given the short duration of their relationship, the whirlwind courtship. There’s time for all the other stuff, the getting-to-know-you stuff, later. Or so he keeps telling himself.

Right now, he has a fiancee, a woman who wants to marry him, and it’s frankly more than he’d ever guessed he’d get out of his life.

So he’s certainly not going to question it just because she was probably around someone and didn’t want to say ‘I love you’ into the phone.

He rounds the corner to the Budget rental car booth, the last one that’s open, and joins the ridiculous, winding queue. By the time he’s approaching the counter, though, the woman in charge frowns at him.

“Do you have a reservation?”

“No,” he answers, shaking his head. “I was hoping —”

“We’re out of cars for anyone that doesn’t have a reservation,” the woman tells him, and then yells the same back through the line.

Coulson sighs.

“Is there another rental place in town?”

“Not one with cars for people who don’t have reservations,” the woman answers.

Coulson sighs and walks away from the booth towards the spot where he can hail a cab. As he’s standing on the curb, he sees Ace Peterson again as he climbs into a large, shady-looking van. Ace stares at him through the passenger-side window, curious and then with a real spark of recognition, and waves out at Coulson.

Coulson waves back, and is still watching when the driver of the van — a woman, from the looks of it — calls Ace’s attention towards her.

A moment later, the van is gone, and Coulson is getting into a taxi.

“Anywhere I might be able to rent a car,” Coulson requests of his driver, and then leans his head backwards on the seat.

He dozes a little — it’s been a long couple of days, he was up basically all night, and he’s tired and cranky — and only really snaps awake when the driver stops in front of an Enterprise rental building in the very south part of the city.

It’s probably a mistake that he pays for the cab before he checks on the availability of cars because Coulson once again finds himself leaning against a counter, cursing under his breath at his bad luck.

“I’m headed towards San Antonio,” a man in a large hunting jacket offers as he picks up his reserved car. “If you’re headed south, I’ll…”

“Yes,” Coulson breathes. “Thank you so much.”

They move together to the sedan, and he throws his bag in the back as they make cursory introductions. The truth is that Coulson is tired and annoyed and not really interested in making the firm acquaintance of Texans in hunting jackets, but he’s grateful and polite.

 

* * *

 

 

They’re closing in on an hour in the car, during which Coulson’s friendly driver has kept on an AM radio station playing a lot of pandering, fear-mongering crap about gifted individuals — _freaks_ , their host calls them. _Freaks_ out to disturb the American way of life, out to take the life and liberty and happiness from real Americans.

(This part of the country, he thought that was the rhetoric reserved for immigrants, but he supposes people with that much hate inside of them can spare it for a lot of different targets.)

It all makes Coulson clench his jaw, especially after the rounds of meetings this past week.

He’s brought Rosalind around a little bit — gotten her to at least stop talking about gifts as though they’re necessarily diseases — but the truth is that she’s always been relatively progressive compared to the fear-mongering of some politicians. At least Rosalind consistently talks about gifted individuals _as people_.

(It sometimes makes him pause, if he’s honest — the excuses he constantly makes for her in his own head. _Not as bad as she could be_ is a pretty crappy way to feel about his fiance.)

His gratitude for the ride wears out after about fifty something miles of right wing bullshit, when his pounding headache won’t let him be silent any more.

He reaches forward and turns off the radio.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“I can’t listen to this shit anymore.”

“So I guess you’re the type that thinks we should just turn the country over to freaks.”

“I’m the type who knows that gifted individuals have saved all of our lives,” Coulson corrects him, “and I’m the type that knows that becoming gifted is about genetics that we can’t know in advance. You could be talking about your wife or your best friend or even yourself.”

His driver pulls into the biggest truck stop Coulson has ever seen, like the WalMart of gas stations, and slams on his breaks.

“Get the fuck out,” he snarls, and Coulson’s eyebrows raise as he opens his door and steps into the parking lot, his coat draped over his arm. The driver jumps out of his own door and grabs hold of the suitcase from the back, and before Coulson can intervene, he’s watching the man in the hunting jacket unzip his suitcase and dump his clothes into the parking lot. The suitcase is dropped unceremoniously on top, and then the car drives away, leaving Coulson standing, mostly numb, in the middle of a giant truckstop somewhere outside San Antonio.

Luckily it’s really busy — vehicles at almost all of the dozens and dozens of gas pumps — so he’ll probably be able to get a ride. The teeming mass of humanity around him fades, though, as he stares at his clothes on the ground.

“Agent Coulson?”

A voice draws his attention to the side, and he sees Ace Peterson eating a kolache and staring at him, clearly worried.

“Hi, Ace.”

He tries to smile, like this is normal.

“Do you need some help?”

“No,” Coulson waves off Ace, only to be startled by a woman’s voice.

“Are you okay?”

He looks over at her — a young woman of probably about thirty, her hair styled in a messy bob — and nods.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because some guy just dumped your suitcase on the ground?”

“Oh yeah.” He swallows. “That.”

She frowns at him, like she’s worried there might be something wrong with him, and he leans down to pick up a pair of slacks as she collects Ace’s snack and sets it on top of her van with her own. Then she and Ace kneel down to help.

The woman seems nice at least, smiling at him as she folds up a t-shirt, but she stalls as she picks up a pair of black silk boxers and rubs the fabric between her fingers.

“Are you fondling my underwear?”

She jumps slightly, and looks up at him like she’s been caught.

“Just looking,” she defends herself. “I’ve never known anyone with silk underwear before. They’re pretty fancy.”

He blushes and strides across the parking lot to snatch them from her hands and bury them in the suitcase.

“You shouldn’t fondle other people’s fancy underwear.”

She holds her hands up, as in surrender, but the smirk on her face says she’s still too amused.

He can feel his cheeks get hot as he stands back up and chases down a shirt.

“You really pissed off your friend, huh?”

“Not my friend,” he shakes his head and tries to wrangle the button down he’s caught. “They were out of rental cars, and he offered to give me a ride.”

“And you were rude enough to get kicked out in a Buc-ee’s parking lot?”

“I was unwilling enough to listen to Rush Limbaugh talk about the need to weed out powered people,” Coulson snaps back, a little surprised by the woman’s slow smile.

“Then I guess Ace is right about you.”

He glances over at Ace, gets a wide smile in return, and manages to smile back.

“I told Daisy we should give you a ride,” Ace tells him.

Coulson swallows.

“Where are you headed?”

“To Mike’s,” the woman answers.

“In LA?”

She nods, and he can’t help but feel like he’s fallen into the first piece of genuinely good luck since he left DC. Maybe before. Mike’s apartment is two hours from Roz’s at most — close enough for a cab.

“That would be...really nice. My flight got cancelled and I couldn’t get a car and —”

“And then you got your fancy underwear dumped on the ground at a truck stop. Yeah, I got it,” she tells him, as they finish packing up his clothes.

“So you’ll take me?”

“My van’s not very fancy,” she warns him.

“Beggars can’t be choosers, right?” He quips, and then frowns at himself as she raises an eyebrow, suddenly worried he’s come across as suggesting that if he _could_ choose he wouldn’t choose her. “I’ll pay for gas,” he jumps in. “And I could swing motel rooms if we need…”

“Yeah, okay,” she tells him, more like she wants him to stop groveling than like she means it.

“I’m Phil Coulson.”

She nods once.

“Mike has told me a little about you,” she informs him, sort of enigmatic, like she wants him to wonder what she knows. And what it means to her.

For the first time it really dawns on him how _strange_ it is to think about Mike Peterson trusting a random woman in Texas with Ace. For the first time it dawns on him that she probably _isn’t_ a random woman at all.

“How do you know Mike and Ace?”

“Mike and I met a few years ago when he was...under the weather.”

Coulson swallows.

“Was that after...”

“Before you found him, but after those doctors got to him, yeah. I wanted to protect him from scary men in suits. I guess it’s not a bad thing I failed, though.”

“We tried to help,” Coulson tells her.

“I know. He says you saved his life.”

“I’m not so scary,” he tells her, smoothing a hand down his tie.

“Maybe.”

When she opens the back of her van to let him heft in his suitcase, he’s a little shocked at how it’s set up — computer equipment and a sleeping bag, like a bedroom and office all in one. Just before she slams the door, he catches a map on the inside that he’d _swear_ was marking out secure SHIELD facilities.

“Who _are_ you?” He asks, suddenly wondering what he’s getting himself into.

“The person who’s saving your ass,” she snaps back.

“You’re right,” he shakes his head, though he can’t quite still his thoughts. “I’m sorry, I —”

“It’s okay,” she shakes her head, and then smiles at him, not quite real at first and then melting into a grin. “Daisy Johnson.”

Coulson stretches out his right hand and Daisy looks at it for a moment, almost surprised, before she reaches out and takes hold of it.

“Phil,” he repeats. His palm tingles where her fingers touch it, and he pauses — comes out of his own head and his own scattered thoughts — long enough to really _see_ her, beyond just a nice young woman. She’s beautiful, really, striking in a way that draws him in, that makes him want to know more about her.

Ace interrupts their over-long handshake by leaning up against Daisy’s side.

“We should go,” he announces.

“Yeah, we should,” she agrees, and draws her hand back.

Ace pushes him towards the passenger door as Daisy circles to her side, and Coulson frowns at the bench seat covered in dingy upholstery.

“You have a problem with my van?”

Daisy peers in at him from the driver’s side door like she’s ready to fight him, to come to her van’s defense, and Coulson shakes his head.

“No.” He forces a false smile at her. “It looks cozy.”

At her raised eyebrow, he backs away to let Ace climb into the middle between them, and they take off.

 

* * *

 

They’ve been driving for a while — probably three hours of Coulson and Ace making slightly awkward small talk about Christmas wishes, and then trying to rest quietly in the cramped space — when Daisy calls out that they’re passing the last major town for four hours and pulls into a gas station to fill up and allow for bathroom breaks.

Ace climbs over his lap and races inside, Daisy calling after him to be careful, and Coulson looks over at her.

“How did you end up driving Ace Peterson across the country?”

She smiles at that.

“Mike invited me to spend Christmas with them, and since Ace was having trouble getting a plane all the way to LA…”

“Makes sense,” he nods. “Don’t you have family to spend the holiday with?”

“No,” she answers, smiling into the word like it’s not painful, but he can see how it is. “I grew up in the system, and I…” She shakes her head. “No.”

Coulson frowns, and opens his mouth to say _something_ , but everything he’s got sounds like an empty platitude. He swallows instead, and lets the moment pass.

“Are you and Mike…”

“He’s my friend,” she answers with a shrug. “And we’ve gotten each other out of a few nasty situations.”

Coulson can’t quite help wrinkling his brow at her, trying to figure out what situations she could have gotten Mike out of — superhuman, enhanced Mike Peterson — and it’s the first time it occurs to him that she might be —

“The answer is yes,” she tells him, looking incredibly amused.

He wants to know more, wants to know what she can do, but it seems wrong to ask, like he’s asking for something too personal. But he gets so _excited_ about powered people, still, at least ones like her who have control, who don’t seem terrified and burdened by their gifts.

Daisy grins at him, though, at the stupid eager face he’s sure he’s making, and just raises a silent eyebrow. He wonders if she would tell him if he asked, or if she’s choosing silence on purpose, whether to preserve an air of mystery or because of distrust.

It makes him frown, and he tries to swallow back his over-eagerness as she opens her door and slips out of the van.

Coulson leans across the seat and catches her hand gently, just long enough to slide his credit card into her hand to pay for gas.

“Thanks,” she smiles at him as she takes it, and he climbs out of the passenger door to stretch his legs and walk inside to the restroom.

On his way out, he can’t help but want to call Rosalind, to have someone to commiserate with about his shitty luck, even if it’s possibly changed for the better. Of course, when she answers, he realizes that he’s meant to be keeping all his shitty luck a secret if he wants to surprise her.

“Is something wrong, Phil?” She asks when she picks up the phone.

He clears his throat.

“No. I just...missed you?”

It’s true, more or less, since he’d really like to tell her the story of his day, but he can hear her skepticism.

“Okay…”

“Where are you with wedding plans?”

“Oh, Gideon and I had the best idea.”

Coulson has to stop himself from rolling his eyes, since it seems like _Gideon_ and his wonderful ideas for their wedding have been all Rosalind can talk about lately. He doesn’t trust Gideon, which has been a major source of strife between him and Rosalind. It’s not like he’s suggesting that Gideon is _evil_ , just that he’s been around in a lot of places where evil was happening, and it makes him uncomfortable.

(“ _You could say the same about me_ ,” Roz has argued, and he supposes that’s true. It’s true of him, as well.)

“What’s that?”

“A venetian masquerade ball.”

“Masquerade ball?”

He can _hear_ the way he’s wincing, so Roz must be able to, as well.

“You know, elaborate dresses and gilded masks. Very chic.”

“You want to get married in a mask?”

“You don’t like it?”

He frowns. It sounds awful, and it doesn’t actually sound that much like Rosalind.

“I just always thought I’d be able to actually see my partner on my wedding day.”

“Just wait, Phil. When you see it, you’ll understand. But I have to go, now.”

“Okay, I —”

She hangs up, leaving him staring at his cell phone like it’s possibly a wild animal that could bite him.

“You’re getting married?”

He looks up from his phone to see Daisy’s face.

“Yeah. On Christmas Eve.”

“You’re arguing about wedding themes four days before the wedding? Aren’t you supposed to have figured all this out six months ago?”

“We only met about _four_ months ago,” Coulson admits.

Daisy wrinkles her brow, but nods — doesn’t make any sort of comment, and in fact seems to look encouraging.

“It could be neat. The masked ball thing. Like, revealing yourselves to each other as newlyweds?”

Coulson smiles at her gentle attempt at making him feel better. It almost works — there’s something nice, almost familiar, about her voice.

At the very least, he knows it’s not worth worrying about, and he finds it easy to push it aside.

“Let’s find Ace and get some lunch before we hit the road again?”

She nods, and they head inside.

 

* * *

 

 

“We’re almost out of Texas,” Daisy announces some hours later, as the sun is sinking up ahead of them, and Coulson groans, stretching himself as much as he can on the cramped bench seat. It’s quiet in the van, between the awkward moments of conversation and the fact that she only has a radio — and this part of the country is too big and empty to have much in the way of radio stations.

They’re starting to hit evidence of those winter storms that have closed all the airports. Along the sides of the road, the desert scrub is coated in a blanket of white, and the landscape looks almost totally different than it did just a few hours before.

It’s like a different country, almost, but he supposes that’s not so surprising given that they’ve been driving for almost ten hours.

“This state is too big.”

“Probably,” she half agrees.

“I like it,” Ace tells him. “There’s more room.”

Compared to the apartments where Mike is living in LA, or his grandmother’s rowhouse, that’s true.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “There _is_ a lot of room.”

Daisy smiles over at him, and he blushes, not sure why.

“Tell us about your fiance,” she requests.

“What do you want to know?”

“How did you meet? Does she run another shadowy government organization?”

She asks it like it’s a joke, and Coulson clears his throat, almost startled at the question.

“Yes, actually. She’s in charge of the ATCU.”

“Oh.” Daisy frowns, something too serious in her eyes.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she replies too quickly.

“You’ve heard of them?”

“Yes,” she answers breezily, and something tingles on the back of Coulson’s neck because _no one_ has heard of the ATCU. That’s sort of the point.

“How…”

Daisy raises an eyebrow at him, and he just nods. She obviously has a lot of secrets, and he supposes he’s not exactly in a place to push.

“I was suspicious of her at first — it turns out we both thought the other was behind a string of murders.”

“Of people like me?”

“Yes,” he nods. “But neither of us was, and we were able to combine our forces and save a lot of lives.”

“A real meet cute,” Daisy quips, smiling but with something hollow behind her eyes.

“Sure.”

“The ATCU, they’re interested in a _cure_ , aren’t they?” She says the word — _cure_ — with such disdain, he doesn’t even know how to respond at first.

Coulson meets her eyes over Ace’s head, watches her for too long in the fading light before she has to look back out the windshield.

“Yes. But not...not by force.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes,” Coulson answers again. “There are some people who need it, who can’t control their powers or…”

“I know.”

“But I wouldn’t work with someone who wasn’t interested in really helping people,” Coulson tells her. Or...marry them, he doesn’t say out loud.

She nods, but an awkward silence falls through the van.

“I think we should probably stop somewhere for the night,” Daisy says instead, changing the subject.

“I could drive, if you want to sleep,” he offers, but she quickly shoots it down.

“No offense, but I don’t know you well enough to let you drive her.”

He nods, once. He supposes he’s the last person who should talk about letting someone else drive their car.

“I’ll pay for a motel,” he offers instead.

“Ace and I were just going to sleep in the back, you don’t need —”

“I’ll pay for a motel,” he insists.


	2. Chapter 2

He hasn’t been in New Mexico since he was responding to an 084 that turned out to be about an alien god, and it feels weird to be back. If a Super 8 in the middle of nowhere counts as  _ back _ . 

He climbs out of his side of the van, helping Ace down behind him, and walks to the back as Daisy pulls it open. Inside, he catches a better view of her equipment, of monitors and a map that is  _ totally _ SHIELD bases. 

This time, when Daisy catches him looking, she doesn’t snap at him, just smiles a little warily. 

“This is how you know who the ATCU is. Because you keep tabs on SHIELD.” 

“Yes,” she agrees. 

“Did you start after you...changed?” 

“No, before. I used to be with the Rising Tide, they —” 

Coulson blinks, and suddenly the familiarity of her voice makes a lot of sense.

“Skye?”

“That used to be my name,” she agrees. 

“I was supposed to bring you in,” he tells her, shaking his head. “A few years ago because of…” 

“Mike,” she nods. 

“You knew?” 

“I left a trail of breadcrumbs leading right to me. I sort of figured  _ someone _ would pick it up.” 

“But no one did?” 

“No,” she shakes her head. “Someone did.” 

He thinks about Raina, about the labs Centipede had established, and frowns — there’s this absurd urge to apologize for not getting to her, for not bringing her in. 

She turns towards the building, though, before he can do more than stutter for a moment, and he follows behind. 

“One room left,” she tells him when he joins her in the lobby, and he looks out at the van. 

“Should we keep driving, try to find…” 

“Or we could just share,” she shrugs like it’s no big deal. He guesses it’s not really. She and Ace were planning to squeeze into the back of the van, so cramming into a hotel room seems like it’s probably a step up.

He pays — a little terrified by the really low thirty dollar price tag for a double room with an extra rollaway bed, if he’s being honest — and the three of them crowd down the outdoor hallway to the room. 

Once he’s setting his suitcase down on the twin bed closest to the door, he finally has a chance to pause, to really take in the dirty carpet and the torn drapes. It looks like a scene from a horror movie, just add in a dead body, and he wonders if maybe he should have taken his chances crowding into the back of her van.

Daisy meets his eyes over Ace’s head, and she grins at him like she’s reading his thoughts.

“My van’s not looking so bad now, huh?” 

“It never looked so bad,” he half-defends himself, but smiles at her a little bit. “Would you rather get out of here?” 

“Nah,” she shakes her head. “This isn’t so bad. Plus, this way we have a shower.”

“Well I’m not going in there first,” he declares, only to be immediately embarrassed when Ace pushes past him and snaps on the bathroom light. 

“See, Agent Coulson, it’s not so scary.” 

“Yeah, Agent Coulson,” Daisy teases. 

“That’s Director,” he grouses quietly, playing more offended than he is because Ace and Daisy both seem so happy. 

“I know,” she reassures him, as Ace enters the bathroom and closes the door behind him.

 

* * *

 

 

“Not to sound too suspicious, but did you tell your fiance…”

“She thinks I’m still in DC,” he fills in, and swallows as he sits down on the edge of his bed, facing over to where Daisy does the same. “I thought I’d surprise her by getting back early.” 

“You probably should have checked the weather before you tried that,” she half-laughs at him, and Coulson shakes his head. 

“Good advice, thanks.” He rolls his eyes, but then looks at her seriously. “I won’t tell anyone, if you’d prefer. But even if I did, she’s not…” 

“I’m sure she’s fine. I guess you could say I have trust issues, though.” 

“Well earned ones, I’ll bet.”

She smiles enigmatically. 

“Tell me more about yourself,” she requests, like she’s starting a conversation and also like she’s asking him to pass a test. He supposes that they’re about to share a room, that she’s about to make herself especially vulnerable in that way, and he wants to reassure her. 

“There’s not much more to tell. I was named the Director of SHIELD after everything with Hydra came out. I’ve been rebuilding SHIELD for the last two years.” 

“And falling in love with another secret government employee.” 

He smiles a little at that, but then swallows and meets her eyes meaningfully. 

“I don’t believe it’s a sickness. And I don’t believe it needs a cure.”

“No?”

“No. People...people don’t need to be cured of what they are. I just want to help.” 

She stares into his eyes, like she’s reading his intentions, and he hopes she can see how much he means it. The way she smiles at him, he thinks maybe she does.

“What about you?” He tries to turn the tables without really turning the tables, giving her space to talk if she wants to.

“I got picked up by Centipede.” 

His stomach turns over.

“And they didn’t…” 

“You mean what they did to Mike? No. There was a woman working with them —”

“Raina.” 

“Yeah. Raina. You knew her?” 

“We...were acquainted.” 

Daisy nods seriously, like she understands all the horror that hides under such a brief, surface-level description.

“She knew what I was.”

“How?” 

Daisy licks her lips. 

“It’s all very...complicated. But she had known my father, and she wanted to use me as leverage to get her hands on an artifact that would transform us.” 

Somehow it makes a lot of sense that Raina is gifted, that that was what she was getting out of her association with Centipede. 

“And so you’re both…” 

“Inhumans,” she supplies.

“Inhumans,” he repeats. “That’s what…” 

“That’s what we call ourselves. The story goes that we were a genetic experiment, basically. An alien race trying to make weapons by combining alien and human DNA.” 

“How did you learn all this? Was your father...” 

“He was actually human. My mother was the Inhuman.” 

“Past tense?” 

She smiles at him, and he can see her close off a little bit. 

“It’s a long story.” 

He nods once. 

“Thank you for sharing.” 

Daisy smiles, and it’s sad but  _ real _ , like maybe she really trusts him, and he  _ needs  _ to know more, but for some reason just this feels like a major win. 

 

* * *

 

 

He wakes up at six because that’s what he’s used to, and rolls over in his bed to face the rest of the room — to face Daisy, asleep on the twin bed across from him. 

She’s lovely in her sleep, peaceful and untroubled, and Coulson has to smile at how  _ young _ she looks. He’d stick by his first assessment — she’s probably around thirty — but there’s something in the way she carries herself that makes her seem older, like she’s seen more than a woman her age should have seen. 

(More than anyone should have seen.) 

As he’s contemplating her, Ace climbs out of his rollaway bed, making a loud creaking sound, and Daisy’s eyes pop open, her mouth pulled instantly into a frown. 

“Too early,” she groans, and smashes her pillow over her head. 

Coulson laughs, somehow finding her wincing frown just as endearing as her peaceful sleeping face, and sits up in bed. 

“Let’s go get breakfast,” he suggests to the boy, and hears Daisy murmur her agreement from under her pillow. 

He and Ace take turns in the bathroom, and Coulson pulls on a pair of jeans with a henley layered over a t-shirt — warmer than his suit — and they make it out of the hotel room to wander down the road towards somewhere with coffee and donuts. 

Along the way, they talk middle school and soccer practice and all the things that are fun about being twelve.

They push into the door of a local donut shop, blasted in the face by the heater, right as Ace tells him:

“I wish my dad could come to my games.” 

It makes something in Coulson’s chest hurt. If they had just gotten to him faster, he wonders if...

Coulson grasps Ace’s shoulder a little too tight and gets them in line. He and Ace order a few pastries — plus a coffee for him and a hot chocolate for Ace — before sitting down at a small table.

“My dad died when I was nine,” Coulson tells him, not something he’s in the habit of sharing with a lot of people, but he feels a connection to the boy. He always has, if he’s being honest.

Ace looks up at him, donut perched just beyond his mouth. 

“I didn’t know that.” 

Coulson shakes his head. 

“I just mean… I know it’s hard. And it’s okay to be upset that your dad can’t be around all the time.” 

“Were you mad that your dad wasn’t around?” 

“Sometimes,” Coulson admits. “Even though it wasn’t his fault.”

“I know my dad is doing good. But we used to be a team, and now…” 

“Now he’s trying to protect you instead of being a team with you.”

“At least I get to see him for Christmas,” Ace tells him, smiling at that. 

Coulson nods. 

“It’s okay to be upset, but it’s also good to make the most of the time you have.”

“The last time he came to visit, we played Avengers.”

“Which Avenger are you?” 

“I’m the Hulk,” Ace tells him, and Coulson smiles as he listens to Ace discuss the finer points of Bruce Banner’s life and works. 

They take about an hour before heading back to the hotel, Coulson carrying a few donut options and a coffee for Daisy. 

“You have to be the one to wake her up,” Ace informs him as the walk down the dingy hall towards the room. “She’s really grumpy in the mornings.”

“Is she really?” 

“Yeah, whenever she visits, dad says to avoid her room until after eleven.” 

Coulson laughs and looks down to his watch, which now reads eight. When he pushes the door open, Daisy is still fast asleep — her head back on top of her pillow at least — and Ace grabs his soccer ball to head to the parking lot. 

Stepping slowly, Coulson approaches her bed and sets down the coffee and donuts on the night table. 

“Daisy,” he whispers, and is met with no sign of life, so he sets a gentle hand on her bare arm where it’s sticking out of the covers. 

Suddenly, she’s gripping his wrist with surprising strength, and he lets his arm go limp in her hand. 

“Daisy,” he tries again, and her eyes pop open to meet his gaze. There’s a moment where she looks terrified, but he can see when she fully wakes up, the dawning recognition that she’s somewhere safe. 

“Sorry,” she tears her hand off of his arm. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” 

Coulson can’t help a bemused smile at that — as though someone gripping his wrist would cause any level of hurt worth mentioning — but she looks at him with real fear, and then scans around the room like she’s looking for some evidence. 

Her powers, he realizes. Whatever it is she can do, she’s worried she might have done it to him. 

“No,” he reassures her. “No, it’s fine. I brought coffee.” 

She looks excited by that prospect and sits up, cross legged on her bed so the oversized t-shirt she wears falls down her right shoulder, and the smile she shoots him when he hands her the coffee makes his heart skip a beat.

“Does this have cream and sugar?” 

“Yeah,” he manages to croak, a little too overwhelmed by the vision she makes with mussed up hair, cradling a to-go cup of coffee between her hands. “I was guessing, I hope it’s…”

She takes a long slow sip, and smiles up at him. 

“It’s perfect, thank you.” 

Coulson nods once and forces a swallow. 

“I brought donuts, too, if you…” 

She grabs the bag before he can finish, and finds the cream-filled one. 

“You gonna join me?” 

“I already had one,” he waves off the offer, and gets a raised eyebrow. 

“Watching your figure for the wedding?” 

Coulson laughs at that and takes a seat at the foot of her bed before grabbing a jelly donut. 

“I’ve been forgoing carbs for way too long,” he admits as he takes a bite, letting the sugar melt on his tongue. “It’s paid off a little,” he mumbles around his bite, letting his left hand land on his belly, “but this is better.” 

Daisy laughs and takes a giant bite of hers. 

“You look pretty good out of the suit,” she offers, and he flushes as he can feel her gaze run down his shoulders. “I like the scruff, too.” 

Coulson drags his hand across his cheek, suddenly embarrassed about it. It ages him, he knows: the salt and pepper stubble that’s more salt than pepper at this point. 

“I need to shave it off before I see Rosalind.” 

She frowns, but shrugs. 

“I think she’d like it.” 

“Oh?”

“Mmm, it’s very rugged and manly.”

Daisy laughs as she says it, and Coulson smiles a little too wide as he takes another giant bite of his donut.

 

* * *

 

 

Daisy takes only twenty minutes to get herself together while he and Ace kick the ball in the parking lot. When she exits the hotel and loads her bag into the back of the van, Ace picks up the soccer ball and then pauses. 

“Hey, Daisy,” he calls to her, “can you do the thing?” 

She looks around the empty parking lot for a moment, and then at Coulson, before nodding her head. Ace tosses her the soccer ball, and Daisy stretches her hands out and does  _ something _ that makes it stay in the air. 

Coulson watches, more than a little spellbound, as she sort of juggles the ball twenty feet over her head for a moment, pushing it higher and higher until it drops back into Ace’s outstretched hands. 

“That’s so cool,” Ace tells her, a little trace of hero worship in his voice. 

“So cool,” Coulson repeats, much more than a little trace of hero worship in his. “What…” 

“Do I do?” 

Coulson nods and then shakes his head. 

“Sorry, you don’t have to —”

“Everything vibrates,” she tells him. “All the time. At first, when I changed, it was like the whole world was so  _ loud _ and I had to learn to block it out.” 

“But now?” 

“I can focus on a single object and change the way it vibrates.” 

Coulson tilts his head as he looks at her, not quite able to understand what that means. 

Daisy raises her eyebrow at him and holds out her left hand, clearly requesting that he hold out his hand as well. When he does, she cradles his right palm in her left and then holds the fingers of her right hand above it, so they barely brush the surface of his skin. 

It makes him shiver, the gentle, barely-there touch of skin on skin, and Daisy grins at him before she does  _ something _ and he can feel vibrations run along the surface of his palm.

“Wow,” Coulson whispers, breathless at the feel of her power.

She smiles at him when she drops his hand.

“When I changed, I caused a huge earthquake in Puerto Rico. It —”

She pauses when she can see his obvious shock. 

“San Juan? An ancient city underground?” 

“Yeah.” 

Coulson swallows.

“I was there, sometime after it was destroyed. I had a map.” 

“A map? Where did you get a map?”

“It was in my brain,” he answers, playing at cryptic, enigmatic like she’s been. It works, based on the way Daisy’s head tilts as she takes him in. 

“What does that mean?” 

“It’s a long story,” he teases her, watching as her eyebrows shoot up. 

“Luckily, we have a long drive.” 

Coulson smiles as they climb into the van.

 

* * *

 

Ace falls asleep across his lap, bored of the flat desert landscape and not really following the story, while Coulson tells her everything. Everything. 

He’s never sat down and told someone everything before. There had been moments when he’d gotten close with May, and she knows a lot, but there will always be a wall there. 

He’s barely told Rosalind any of it — the carving, the feeling of going insane, the way he’s felt like he’s been drowning since the day he woke up, like he’s not even sure if he can fight it anymore. 

But Daisy...something about her face, about her voice when she asks him questions, about the way she listens, makes it almost impossible  _ not _ to tell her. 

“So there was something in your DNA telling you to get there,” she repeats, seemingly fascinated by this. 

“As near as we can tell,” he agrees. 

Outside, the snow has vanished, replaced by regular brown desert, and they’ve long since passed into Arizona.

“I didn’t know anything like that existed.”

“Do you know people who know more about...this stuff?” 

Daisy smiles at him, but slowly shakes her head. 

“Your mother?” 

“Dead,” she supplies. “I only got to know her for about a month, but she…” She licks her lips and keeps her eyes trained on the empty road in front of them. “It wasn’t her fault. She was good once, but then she was taken. They experimented on her.” 

Coulson just watches her face in profile, unsure of what to say, but he can feel curling horror in his stomach.

“Hydra?” 

“Yeah,” she agrees. 

She tells the story slowly, of her mother’s small community of Inhumans, of the good she had tried to do. Of the way she came to hate humans, of the way Daisy had to end things.

“That’s why we’ve seen the increase in gifted people,” Coulson breathes, solving a long-standing mystery. 

“My fault,” Daisy agrees. 

“No,” Coulson breaks in. “You can’t possibly blame yourself for that.”

She just smiles at him. 

“I want to help them, you know? My people. But I’m not exactly equipt.” 

“I am,” he blurts, which gets him a raised eyebrow. 

“Yeah?” 

“We could...we could help each other on this.” 

She nods once, not an agreement, more like a willingness to contemplate the issue. 

“I’ll think about it,” she tells him, and then falls silent, but a thoughtful silence. 

 

* * *

 

 

They’re getting close, less than two hours away, when something pops,  _ loudly _ , under the hood, startling them all as Daisy manages to let the van coast into a gas station. 

“Fuck,” she sighs and drops her forehead to the steering wheel, and then seems to catch herself, looking over at Ace’s wide-eyed expression. 

“I won’t tell dad,” he promises, and they both smile, like this is some long-standing joke between them.

Coulson clears his throat.

“Do you want me to call AAA?” 

“I can probably fix it,” she answers, shaking her head. 

He nods, not pushing it, but she seems so upset about it — like her vehicle’s failing performance is intensely personal.

“This van has seen better days,” Coulson notes, watching the engine smoke a bit.

“She’s always gotten me where I need to go,” Daisy tells him, stroking her hand over the van’s dash protectively.

“I get that.” Although he’s not entirely sure that he does. Lola means a lot to him, but she’s a link to his father, to his youth, to the man that he swears he could almost be again. Daisy’s van seems...different, and he wonders if he’s correct in his assessment that she lives in the back most of the time.

“Let me take a look,” she sighs and opens her door before turning to Ace. “Why don’t you sit tight, and we’ll hopefully be on the road again in ten minutes?” 

Ace nods, but Coulson slips out the passenger door a moment later.

“How long have you had her?”

She’s got the hood up, and she’s looking inside like someone who doesn’t know  _ exactly _ what she’s looking at, but who always manages to fix it anyways. 

(He knows this look very very well, though he’s progressed beyond it since fitting Lola with thrusters.) 

“Years,” she answers. “Six, I think?” 

“So she was old when you got her.” 

“Well, beggars can’t be choosers,” she answers with a shrug. 

“I didn’t mean it’s a bad thing. Old cars are great, but they need extra attention. If you want I could pay for some repairs. Even upgrades.” 

“You don’t have to do that.” 

“It’s not a problem, and you’ve really saved my ass —”

“I don’t want your money,” Daisy cuts him off. “She doesn’t need upgrades, okay? I just need to fix whatever’s wrong.” 

“Then let me help.”

He nudges up next to her to look under the hood. 

“Because you know something about cars?” The disbelief practically drips from her expression.

“Don’t let the suits fool you,” he tries to tease her, even though he’s not wearing one today. “I definitely know my way around cars.” 

“No you don’t,” she tells him, squinting like he’s really thrown her for a loop. 

“When we get to LA, I’ll take you for a ride in mine. I restored her with my dad when I was a kid.”

“And you still have the same car?” 

“She’s a 62 Corvette — a classic.”

“I suppose you gave her some  _ upgrades _ ?” 

“That’s classified,” he quips, watching as she turns a bemused smile on him. 

“But you’re gonna show me, aren’t you?”

She moves up close to him so their hands brush, and the contact makes him shiver almost violently, like he can’t decide whether he wants to get closer or pull away. 

“It’s better when it’s a surprise.”

“Oh yeah?” 

He turns towards her, acting on the instinct that says he should definitely get closer. She has a lovely smile, the kind that draws you in even when you know you shouldn’t be  _ drawn _ . 

“Just wait. Lola is —”

“ _ Lola _ ?” 

She grins at him, like she’s very amused by the name, and he frowns. 

“What’s wrong with  _ Lola _ ?” 

“Nothing,” she answers, though her smile grows, becoming even more lovely as she watches him. “It’s very cute.”

“Cute?” 

He’s about to be offended on Lola’s behalf, but Daisy shakes her head. 

“I like it. It shows she matters to you.”

It makes him smile, the earnestness in her eyes as she tells him she likes it.

“Does that mean you named your van?” 

“That’s classified,” she parrots back at him, raising her eyebrow. 

“So what do I have to do to —”

He leans further towards her and bumps the rod holding the hood up, so it comes crashing down on top of them, catching him full on the head. 

“Shit,” he grunts as his vision goes white, the pain stabbing through his skull for a moment, and she jumps forward to help him prop the good back up. 

“God, Phil, let me see,” she whispers, pulling his head down so she can brush her fingers through his hair on top of his head. 

“I’m fine,” he insists quietly, though he doesn’t really have the will to pull away. 

“You’ve already got a bump,” she tells him, frowning at him when she releases him and he pulls back. 

“Really, I’m okay. Let me take a look at this.” 

She nods once and backs away from him slowly, but he can feel her eyes on him as she climbs back into the van to sit with Ace. 

His head still throbs, but he figures that’s what he gets for trying to flirt. 


	3. Chapter 3

Of course he can’t fix it.

It’s _almost_ a relief that Daisy can’t, either — that he’s not proven to be a liar in his mechanic skills — but it leaves them stranded by the side of the road as he calls AAA and gets them a tow.

“We can either stay out here overnight, or catch a cab to Mike’s,” he offers, as he closes the phone.

Daisy nods and looks him up and down.

“I guess it pays to pick up hitchhikers with fancy underwear.”

Coulson grins at her and watches as she licks her lips, like she wants to avoid making the decision.

“I think we should get all the way to Mike’s,” he offers. “I’m sure Ace wants to see his dad.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “And are you gonna get a cab from there? Or wait for my van to deliver you to your house in style?”

He feels something fall in his chest because he has no excuse to stay, not really, but then Ace grasps his hand.

“You should stay,” he informs Coulson. “Dad says he’d like to see you.”

Coulson smiles down at the kid.

“I can’t turn down an offer like that,” he answers, directed at Ace, but looking up enough to see Daisy’s answering smile at his words. “Besides, I’ll stay so I can pay for repairs.”

“You don’t have to,” she tries to tell him, but Coulson shakes his head.

“Please let me.” He whispers, doing his best to convey a desire to help — nothing of pity or worry — and Daisy nods slowly.

“Okay,” she agrees, her eyes and serious, like this is an important concession, to let him help her. 

Daisy trusts him, and it feels good. Probably too good.

 

* * *

 

 

They pile out of a taxi in Mike’s apartment building. It’s a nice place, Coulson had made sure of that when Mike joined the SHIELD payroll. The grounds have a big pool and playground for Ace, and plenty of spare room in the apartment.

Mike is out the door to meet them before they’ve knocked — Ace’s cell phone is an easy answer to that question — and he lifts Ace into a hug before slinging an arm around Daisy’s shoulders. They look like a little family unit, Coulson realizes, and he wonders what Daisy and Mike’s relationship really is. (And why he’s jealous.)

“Director Coulson,” Mike greets him with a warm handshake, letting go of his grip on Daisy to do so, though Ace remains trapped against his chest, his arms tight around Mike’s neck. “She didn’t give you too much trouble, did she?”

They both look back at Daisy fondly as she sticks out her tongue at Mike in response.

“No,” Coulson laughs. “I think we came to a good understanding.”

“Men in suits aren’t so bad,” Daisy tells Mike, and then drags her eyes down Coulson’s form, “at least when they take off their suits.”

Coulson raises his eyebrows at her and can’t quite hold back a smile.

“Oookay,” Mike looks between them almost warily, “if you guys are hungry, I made dinner.”

“Spaghetti?” Ace requests as Mike releases him from their hug.

“You’ll have to check and see.”

He and Daisy and Mike follow behind as Ace disappears into the apartment, dragging their bags with them, including all of Daisy’s computer equipment and a lot of personal effects from her van.

( _“Be careful with her, she’s my home,”_ Daisy had called after the mechanics, smiling sweetly and more than a little sadly.)

“You’re in the guest room, Daisy,” Mike tells her, “and Director —”

“Phil,” Coulson corrects him, “please.”

Mike nods once.

“Phil. You’re in the office. There’s a pullout couch —”

“Perfect,” Coulson thanks him and follows the directions to the home office, where he sets down his bag and takes off his jacket.

It’s only then that he realizes he hasn’t called Rosalind today. There’s a moment where he wonders if he should tell her — if he should even ask her to come get him.

But another, louder, part of him wants to eat a family dinner, wants to talk to Daisy some more.

He pulls out his phone to call her, to check in briefly, and only gets her voicemail.

“It’s me,” he says after her recorded message plays. “I just wanted to see how things are going. I’ll talk to you later.”

He pauses before he hangs up, like the message isn’t really complete, and then Daisy pokes her head into his room. Quickly, he hangs up and pockets his phone.

“Ready for dinner?”

“Very,” he agrees.

“Mike makes the _best_ spaghetti.”

“Is that so?” He raises his eyebrows.

“Now you’re gonna tell me that _you_ make the best spaghetti,” Daisy teases him as they walk down the hall.

“My mother’s recipe is widely recognized as _the best_ spaghetti.”

She smiles at him and bumps her shoulder against his.

“You know about cars _and_ you cook?”

He grins, more than a little embarrassed, but tries to cover it over.

“I’m quite a catch.”

“I can tell.”

She laughs, a beautiful happy sound as they approach the dining room table and sit down with Mike and Ace.

 

* * *

 

 

The next day is slow — mostly waiting for a call from the mechanic about Daisy’s van — and he finds himself sprawled on the couch with Ace watching cartoons.

“You like Daisy,” Ace tells him during a commercial break, and Coulson frowns.

“Daisy’s a very nice lady.”

“Yeah, but you _like_ her. She likes you, too.”

“How’d you figure this out?”

“You look at her like this,” Ace makes his eyes go far away and clasps his hands by his face, “and she smiles a lot.”

“Doesn’t Daisy usually smile?”

“Not this much. She likes you,” Ace announces sagely.

“Maybe she likes your dad,” Coulson suggests, but Ace shakes his head.

“Dad says he doesn’t like Daisy like that.”

“He doesn’t?”

“No. But you do.”

“I’m getting married to someone else in two days,” Coulson reminds him.

“How do you know she’s the right one, and not Daisy?”

“I…”

Coulson swallows, not sure how to answer that question, but very sure that he wants to spend more time with her. Like maybe that will help him understand...something.

They’re interrupted when Mike walks into the room.

“Still no word about the van?”

“No,” Coulson tells him, “not that I’ve heard.”

“Maybe we should call you a cab? Otherwise you’re going to end up spending another night here.”

Coulson licks his lips.

“Would that be a problem?”

“Of course not,” Mike responds, and Coulson isn’t entirely sure if he’s just being nice, or whether he really means it.

“Because I —”

“I’m just surprised,” Mike tells him.

“He wants to spend more time with Daisy,” Ace fills in, and Coulson can feel himself flush.

“Professionally. There are some more things we should talk about.”

Mike looks over at Ace, and Coulson can feel them exchanging some kind of _look_ about him.

“I’ll make dinner,” he offers, like he needs to sweeten the pot.

“Yeah,” Mike accepts, looking too amused. “You’re welcome to stay.”

“To spend more time with Daisy,” Ace adds, more than a little snarky.

 

* * *

 

 

“Have you thought about what I said? About working with SHIELD?”

He can see Daisy tense, see her knuckles turn slightly white against the steering wheel. It had taken much longer than expected to get repairs done on the van, and it’s approaching seven at night as the two of them return to Mike’s house.

“Yeah. And I could see working with _you_ , but…”

Daisy falls into silence.

“But you’re not sure about SHIELD.”

“Or the ATCU. I’m sorry Phil, I just —”

“I understand.”

“But we can talk about stuff, at least? If I can help other Inhumans, I want to find a way.”

“You could be a consultant,” he offers. “You’d never have to report to anyone but me.”

“Yeah?”

She glances over at him and smiles.

“Yeah,” he promises with a nod.

“SHIELD consultant,” she says, like she’s trying out the title, and Coulson can’t help smiling.

“Would you be able to spend some time in this area?”

“Yeah, that’s easy.”

“Because I can put you up somewhere, if you don’t want to stay at the base.”

“I’ve got my house right here,” she smiles gently at him as she rubs her hand over the dash, and Coulson smiles back.

“But if you want…”

“We’ll talk about it later,” she tells him, shutting down the conversation. “What are we making Ace and Mike for dinner?”

“We?”

“I was gonna help, if you —”

“No, that sounds...nice.”

It’s been a long time since he cooked with someone. Rosalind always jokes about making good reservations, and it doesn’t bother him at all — he doesn’t mind being the one that cooks — but it sounds nice, still. Making dinner with someone.

“I’m like, the worst cook, though.”

“The worst?”

“I learned cookies. Past that it’s pretty much just stuff you can make on a hot plate. But I can follow directions.”

“Hotplate, huh?”

“I make a really impressive grilled cheese,” she boasts.

“Not as good as mine.”

“Are you challenging me to a grilled cheese cookoff?”

Coulson presses his lips together, biting back a smile.

“I’m gonna win.”

“You _so_ aren’t.”

They laugh all the way through the grocery store, and all the way through making their grilled cheese sandwiches.

(Mike and Ace vote for his as the best grilled cheese, but he can’t help but prefer Daisy’s version.)

 

* * *

 

 

“You’re up late.”

Her voice startles him as he walks into the kitchen, and he glances over to see her perched on the countertop, drinking a beer and doing something on her phone, which she slides into her pocket.

“Yeah,” he answers, and opens the fridge, pulling out a beer. Daisy dangles the bottle opener from her index finger in offer, and he walks towards her to take it, leaning up against the counter beside her.

“You can’t sleep?”

“No,” he admits. “I guess I’m...apprehensive about tomorrow.”

“Apprehensive?”

He shrugs, unable to find a better way to explain the train of thought that’s been running through his head, the questions he’s been asking himself. He takes several long pulls off the bottle, letting it go to his head more than he probably should.

“Can I ask you something? You don’t...you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

She pulls her top lip between her teeth, worrying the bit of skin for a moment as she looks at him, something serious in her eyes.

“Hmm?”

“Why the rush?”

“Rush?”

“To get married? You’ve known your fiance for four months, right?”

“I guess that sounds pretty crazy,” he admits.

“Not crazy,” she shakes her head. “Just...fast.”

“It _is_ fast,” he admits. “I never really…” Coulson licks his lips. “I never thought I was going to get married. And then Rosalind was there, and she wanted…”

“She wanted the same thing?”

He nods.

“And I realized that maybe I could have...everything that marriage means.”

“What’s that?”

“A partner,” he shrugs. “A partner in everything. Someone that will always have your back, no matter what. Someone who...when you’re with them, you’re home.”

Her lips curve upwards at that, something sweetly sad in her expression.

“I like the sound of that,” she tells him, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve always wanted that, too.”

“You’ll find it,” he tells her because of course she will. Because she’s kind and wonderful and gorgeous.

“Rosalind is very lucky,” she tells him, her voice too soft, “to get to be your home.”

Something twists in his chest at the sincerity in her expression, at how much he wants to be that for her, at how much he wants —

“I should go to bed,” he manages, just enough will power left in him to know he needs to extract himself from this situation before something happens. Because it _could_ , and he shouldn’t want that so much.

“Yeah,” she answers, smiling slightly down at him from her perch on the counter.

“I just wanted to say...thank you, though.”

“You’re welcome,” she replies easily, but like she _means_ it, and he finds himself drawn in so he can set a soft hand against her arm.

“Goodnight,” he manages, and leans in enough to give her a brief hug, awkward because it’s not something he does — just going around and hugging people. But she’s _warm_ and soft, and as he splays a hand across her lower back, she leans into him, twisting herself to face him on the counter.

“Night,” she whispers, and he can feel her turn enough to drag her lips across his cheek, so the slight pull across his three days of stubble makes his whole cheek tingle, makes all the blood in his body head south.

“Hmm,” he tries not to outright moan at the sensation.

“You haven’t shaved, yet,” she whispers way too close to his ear, like his stubble is a _very_ good thing.

“No,” he mumbles, and almost moans again as she rubs her cheek against his, like she’s enjoying the feel of it.

Coulson freezes against her, pulls in a breath that’s all about taking in the scent of her hair, enjoying the warmth of her.

“Daisy,” he whispers her name because it’s a good name, bright and perfect and just exactly like her.

“Phil,” she answers back, and she makes his name sound _so good_ , like it means something. Hearing it feels like coming to life, like he’s been living underwater since Nick Fury brought him back from the dead, and he’s sucking in a breath for the first time in three years.

It’s not a conscious decision when he tilts his head so his lips brush over hers, but at the breathy moan she exhales against his mouth, it’s all he can do to press his lips against hers harder.

Daisy’s hand winds up behind his head, angling his mouth up against hers as he slides between her thighs until he’s pressed against her as close as he can get. Coulson pulls back just far enough to take a short, gasped breath, and Daisy’s lips chase his.

He grunts when her mouth opens under his at the same time her thighs wrap around his hips, pulling so that his cock presses against the heat of her.

She moans when his tongue brushes hers, and Coulson grasps her cheeks in his hands, like it will somehow help him kiss her harder, deeper. Her hands, though, land low on his back, warm even though the layer of t-shirt, and he can feel her bunching the fabric between her hands like she wants to pull it off of him.

And it’s that thought that makes him pull away. Not even the thought of his fiance — that comes crashing in a moment later — but of Daisy seeing him without his shirt, seeing the ugly scar.

It takes her a moment to release him, to drop her arms and legs from where they’ve basically wrapped around him, and she’s breathing heavily, lips swollen and cheeks flushed.

“I’m sorry,” she breathes. “Shit, Phil, I’m so sorry.”

“No,” he shakes his head. “That was all me.”

“No, I…” Daisy swallows, and her eyes scan back down his face, linger at his lips.

“I should go to bed,” he tells her, and then steps back, but it’s _hard_ . Harder than it should be because _Rosalind_ is waiting for him.

“Goodnight,” she whispers before he hurries out of the kitchen and into the guestroom, heaving breaths and feeling a little too close to tears.

 

* * *

 

 

He skips breakfast because he doesn’t know how he can sit at a table with Daisy and Mike and Ace and pretend like everything is normal. Instead he tries to call Rosalind — straight to voicemail again — and considers whether he should get a cab.

The thing is, he doesn’t want to offend Daisy, doesn’t want to seem like he’s looking down on her hospitality in any way.

And, if he’s honest, he wants more time with her.

That thought lets him know he should _definitely_ call a cab, but he doesn’t. He finishes packing up his small suitcase and carries it out to the van.

“Look,” Daisy once they’re both settled into their seats. “I’m sorry about last night, really.”

And he should just accept it, he knows. He should accept her apology because he’s getting married tomorrow, and if he accepts her apology they can put it behind them.

But it _wasn’t_ just her, and for some reason he can’t let her think that, that her affections aren’t reciprocated.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Your fiance would probably disagree.”

“She’d probably be a lot more angry at _me_ ,” he points out, and swallows. “I started it.”

By leaning in, by getting to close, by pressing his cheek against hers where she could feel his stubble.

“You shaved,” Daisy whispers, like she’s reading his thoughts, like this makes her sad.

Her right hand comes up and touches his smooth cheek, soft and tentative.

“Not so rugged and manly?” He asks, smiling against the way her fingers press into his face and then drag gently up his cheekbone.

“Still very handsome,” she half-corrects him, and slides her hand down his jaw until she’s touching the knot of his tie, making him shiver at the pleasurable touch. “Even in a suit.”

Suddenly, she drops her hands and smiles up at him sheepishly.

“See, here I am starting something again.”

“I just can’t figure out why,” Coulson tells her, and he’s really truly baffled why someone like Daisy would be interested in someone like him.

“Really? You’re all...kind and handsome and helpful, and you don’t know why I can’t seem to help myself?”

He slides across the bench seat towards her, even though he knows better.

“You’re —”

He’s cut off when Ace opens the passenger door of the van.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he and Daisy answer in unison.

“Can I come?” Ace asks and Daisy nods absently before she looks over at Mike, who’s watching from a few feet away, and gets a thumbs up.

“Yeah,” Daisy tells him, sparing a glance at Coulson, who slides the rest of the way across the bench seat to make room for Ace.

His thigh almost brushes up against Daisy’s, and he has to set his jaw against the desire to get closer as she backs out of the parking lot.

At the same time, though, he’s grateful for Ace’s presence, for the fact that with a kid around, he’s not going to do anything stupid.

(God, but he wants to do something stupid.)

Instead, he sits quietly, mourning the end of these few days.

 

* * *

 

 

“This is a nice place,” Daisy says, breaking a long silence when they finally arrive at Roz’s house. _Their_ house, Coulson guesses. They’ll be living together here after the wedding, no more bedroom on the base.

(Rosalind hasn’t even been to the base without blindfolds and security protocols, doesn’t even know it’s just a little ways south of here.)

“Yeah,” Coulson agrees. It is. It’s nice.

“Should we just let you off, or…”

“No,” he shakes his head. “No, of course not. You should come meet Rosalind.”

Daisy looks nervous, perhaps understandably, and Coulson touches her arm lightly.

“You’ll see, we’re not that bad.”

“You’re trying to change my mind about all the scary people in suits?”

“Maybe not all,” he allows, grinning at her a little.

Slowly, they exit the van, and walking into Rosalind’s apartment feels like the end of something. It’s the first time he’s felt this bad about it. Even the first time he was here, trying to covertly check out her operation, even when he didn’t trust her, it didn’t feel this wretched to walk inside.

As he leads Daisy and Ace into the house, he can hear hushed voices coming from the dining room, so they walk back that way, only to be greeted by Rosalind sitting at the table with Gideon Malick and three other men in black fieldsuits with armbands sporting a familiar tentacle design, eating from a spread capped off with a whole octopus.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Coulson blurts as he watches his supposed future wife rub elbows with Hydra. Daisy shoves Ace behind her and steps a little in front of Coulson, like she’s his body guard.

“Phil!” Rosalind looks shocked. “You’re not supposed to be back until tomorrow!”

“Well, here I am,” he smiles at her, tense and trying to assess the threat. He can’t believe that Rosalind will try to hurt him, but the four other men in the room could very well go after him, or after Daisy and Ace.

“That’s okay,” Malick says to Rosalind, “we’ll just push this conversation up a few days.”

“Which conversation is that?”

“Our two organizations have a long history together, Phil,” Malick begins, and Coulson rolls his eyes. He’s unarmed, defended by a woman with no real combat training, and it pretty much feels like his wits are the only weapon he has.

“Spare me,” he spits at Malick. “Is this why you had any interest in me?” He directs the question at Rosalind. “It was never real? It was just…”

“Of course it was real,” Rosalind tells him, remarkably cool under pressure as always. It’s one of the things he’s always found attractive about her, if he’s being honest, but now it’s just ugly.

“So, your plan was to marry me in order to bring Hydra and SHIELD back together?”

“Just hear me out,” she tells him, like she’s making perfect sense. Coulson scowls at her, though, and his outright dismissal seems to be the cue for the three men in the room to stand and aim weapons at them.

Coulson rests his hand on Daisy’s shoulder, not sure how best to handle this situation, when Daisy raises her right hand and the guns shake apart in their owners’ hands. The three men then go flying across the room and crash into the wall before falling over.

“Oh,” Coulson whispers, amazed at Daisy’s power — at the violence she’s capable of, at the way her powers can disarm large men and also make his palm tickle.

Malick raises a gun next and finds himself similarly dispatched, leaving Rosalind standing alone in the middle of the room.

“Phil,” she starts, but he cuts her off.

“I was just a mark for you. This whole time.”

“No. I cared about you. Of course I did.”

He shakes his head.

“You can’t possibly expect me to believe that.”

“We can still make this work —”

“You’re _Hydra_. That’s not something I’m willing to work around.”

“Phil —”

“Do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way, Rosalind?”

She gives up lets him cuff her while Daisy ties up the unconscious men in the room, and then Coulson calls May.

“Do you want to come back to Mike’s?” Daisy asks, speaking for the first time since they got here. Her whole body is clearly tense, and he has no idea what to do for her — she saved his life today. If he had walked into this house without her, he’d be dead.  

“No,” he sighs, rubbing his fingers into his temples. “No, I need to tie up some loose ends here.”

“Should we…”

“You should get Ace home,” Coulson tells her. “I don’t know how long this will take.”

She nods once and pulls back to take Ace’s hand, but Coulson reaches out to set a gentle hand on her arm.

“I’ll find you,” he promises.

“Not likely,” she responds. “I’ll find you.”

He smiles at that and watches her and Ace leave, before taking a seat to wait for May.

“So she was a bad guy this whole time?” He hears Ace asking for clarification from Daisy as they go, and he really hopes Mike won’t kill him for getting his son too close to this.

 

* * *

 

 

It takes a day and a half to get Rosalind and Malick situated in a temporary holding cell. It’s almost alarming how _empty_ he feels about the whole thing, like it’s not that big of a deal that he was about to marry a Hydra operative.

Coulson scowls as he passes the entrance to the vaults on the way to his bedroom.

It’s Christmas, but there are no decorations to speak of, nothing here to mark the occasion. May and Andrew are off base together — she only came in to help him sweep up the remains of his would-be marriage — as are Hunter and Bobbi, and Mack and Simmons are visiting family.

It was just a quick phone call to tell them not to bother showing up for the ceremony, and since then, he’s been left alone in an empty space with nothing but his thoughts.

(Technically, his thoughts plus two leading Hydra operatives, held fifty feet below ground.)

She wasn’t real. That makes it easier, for one thing. Any feelings he had for Rosalind were for someone who didn’t really exist.

And after three days with Daisy… Well. It's almost like he's felt _more_ in the last week than he has in the entire last three years combined.

He can’t help but wonder if _that’s_ real, these sudden feelings for a woman way too young for him. It’s been a long time since he felt so _alive_ , though. Like he’s been waiting for her. He wonders what it feels like to her.

Whatever the answer is, he knows he’s not going to find it out here.

Slowly, Coulson pulls off his suit and tie and dresses in jeans and a black t-shirt, a blue cableknit sweater pulled on over the top.

He smiles a little as he pulls Lola’s keys out — it’s been way too long since he took her out, anyways.

 

* * *

 

 

Daisy answers the door, probably because Mike and Ace are neck deep in Christmas presents, and looks shocked for half a second before she’s grinning at him.

“I guess _you_ found _me_.”

He smiles at that and searches her face, looking for some hesitation or concern, and finds none. All he sees is her smile, her brown eyes sparkling, her legs bare and shapely under her short red dress.

“Yeah,” he agrees, his lips pressed together as he tries not to smile too wide.

“Are you okay?”

She looks genuinely concerned, and he supposes that she did see his life fall apart. Actually, she saved his life as it fell apart.

“Yeah,” he answers, smiling a little wider. “I realized this week that...maybe there are better things out there for me. And maybe I can still feel things more deeply than I thought.”

“What kind of things?”

Daisy smiles at him and steps closer, right into his personal space, and her fingers take up residence on his chest, pressing into the blue wool.

And he doesn’t know how to tell her that he feels more like himself since he met her than he has in the last three years; that’s way too much to lay at someone’s feet, even if you’ve known them longer than a few days. In practical terms, Daisy is practically a stranger, but he can't help but feel like he  _knows_ her, like there's nothing strange between them.

“Good things,” he half-clarifies, "I feel...good things," he whispers as he leans in to kiss her, gratified when she kisses back easily, her mouth opening under his like second nature. She moans against his lips and lets her arms wind around his neck, holding him against her while her tongue brushes his lower lip.

Daisy is the one that pulls back, but it takes Coulson a moment to open his eyes and look down to see her flushed cheeks and wet lips.

“And you feel those good things...for me?”

“Yeah,” he half-laughs. “Yes. Of course.”

Daisy kisses him again, sucking his lower lip between hers.

“And you…” He mumbles between kisses. “You feel…”

“Yes,” she laughs into his mouth.

“That’s good. That’s really good.”

“Yeah?”

“Hmmmm,” he moans into her attempt to lick the roof of his mouth.

"I'm really glad you came back," Daisy tells him as her hands slide up to his cheeks. "And that you didn't shave." 

He grins against her fingers as she feels out his stubble.

“I brought Lola.”

“You’re gonna take me for a ride in your really old car?”

It’s challenging, raised eyebrows and a smirk; Coulson bites his lip and steps back.

“Lola can keep up,” he answers, grinning at her.

"You wanna come in and have Christmas first?" Daisy laughs and tugs his hand, pointing him to where Mike and Ace are watching them with amused expressions. 

"Yeah," he smiles, letting himself be pulled inside.


End file.
